Nurses' attitudes towards depression: a study in Slovenia.

Our aim was to discover nurses' attitudes towards depression and to test for the impact of education on these attitudes. Negative attitudes towards depression are one of the reasons for underestimation of depressive disorders in the community and the clinical setting. We developed a questionnaire on attitudes towards depression by using the principal component analysis. We observed overall changes in attitudes and differences in each dimension and compared them between nurses who attended education workshops and those who did not. We learnt that nurses have positive attitudes towards people suffering from depressive disorder and towards curing and healing from depression itself, but a somewhat neutral opinion on possible complications caused by depression. Overall, nurses' attendance at education workshops contributed to improvement in their attitudes. This in turn probably led to a decrease in the stigmatisation of depression.